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When I first started teaching creative writing, more than twenty-five years ago this summer, a colleague, now great friend, shared a writing prompt for me to use with my young teen students. “The prompt will get any reluctant or stuck writer out of their heads and writing.” The Prompt: “Tell me the story of your name.” I have used the prompt in my classes of all ages, for aspiring to established writers, fiction and nonfiction, and have used this often for my own writing. Everyone has a story about their name even if it’s about the tale of how they don’t have or know where they got their names.
Here is the story of my name, according to family folklore:
At seven months pregnant my mother decided on the name Deirdre, eight months, Debra (Debbie), going into the nine-month, Dawn. Dee-dee, Debbie, and Dawn. My father who rarely won an argument, praise be to the alliteration gods, won this one. Dad refused to name me any name that combined with my surname Dunn, would make me sound like “Donald Duck” Dawn Dunn particularly rang with a similar alliteration.
My mother relented on the Debbie, Deirdre, and her favorite, Dawn, but as she labored for forty-eight straight hours, she couldn’t decide on a name deserving of her first born, or any child she was to bear. She was sure about one name, the one name she would never call a child of hers, “Patricia.” In the third grade, my mother had a schoolmate, archenemy, bully, who rubbed her the wrong way that only makes sense to third graders in Catholic School.
Forty-eight hours of excruciating labor pain and no drugs, lying on her back, I wasn’t coming.
“Prep an Emergency C-section”, Mom said she heard the doctor order the nurse. On her way to the operating room my mother grabbed onto the wall closest to her and yelled, “stop, she’s coming.” And I did.
I was born 2:10 PM on May 30, 1964, Memorial Day, with no first name. In those days, after the mother labored and suffered through the pain, she wasn’t afforded the benefits of those after birth endorphins, but instead was knocked out.
My mother, allergic to most everything, had a bad reaction to the anesthesia and it took longer than the doctors anticipated for her to come to. When she finally had, sitting at her bedside was her mother-in-law, my grandmother. She put a straw to my mother’s mouth and while my mother sipped the tepid water, she asked, “Adrienne, my first born died at a year old. Would you consider naming your baby after her?”
My mother, too groggy to hear the name and foggy to comprehend the enormity of the request, agreed.
My aunt, my mom’s sister, and my father, both claim one could hear my mother’s cries and cussing when they handed her a copy of the birth certificate, and the name Patricia Marie Dunn was written in black ink.
From that day on, my mother insisted everyone in the family call me Tricia, with the familiar Bronx accent, “Trisher.” When I turned five years old my mother even came to me to say she was going to change my name legally from Patricia to Trisha(er).” I must have had enough of my mother in me to shout, “No!”
Over the years, I have been called many versions of Patricia, Tricia, Trisher, Trish and Pat. Rarely Patricia. When I published my first two novels, Rebels by Accident (Sourcebooks Fire), and Last Stop on the 6 (Bordighera Press), I published under my given name, or rather the name forced upon my mother, “Patricia Dunn.”
On May 16, 2023, my third book, “Her Father’s Daughter,” published by Crooked Lane Books, edited by the sensational senior editor, Terri Bischoff, is my debut psychological thriller. For branding, marketing, promotional purposes the publisher asked if I would be willing to change my name. I agreed. As a gift to the woman who labored for 48 hours to bring me into this world, I would let her name me.
“Ma, my new pen name will be Tricia Dunn.”
My mom was quiet for longer than I have ever been used to. “Well, Ma?”
“T.M. Dunn,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“I think a better name for you would be T for Tricia M for Marie and T.M. Dunn”
In honor of my mom and because I like the name, my new pen name is T.M. Dunn.
How not to write? Spend hours contemplating a new pen name.
How to write? Write the story of your name. Write the story of your characters’ names. Protagonists, antagonists, and secondary characters. There is always a story. There’s even a story in there not being a story.
It’s been a busy summer, starting with Memorial Day weekend, my birthday. Where I had a great time spending a long weekend in Montauk with my partner and my rescue puppy, Blanqui.
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